Friday, 6 February 2015

Week 2, Manila MTC, Philippines

Hey everyone! I'm having a lot of fun over here in the MTC! In the MTC we eat
pretty much the same for breakfast as we would for dinner, so rice and meat.
Sometimes, maybe once a week we get cereal and maybe another day we get
pancakes, but most of the time it's just rice and meat hahaha. The language is
coming along really well now that I'm in my second week, my companions (we're in a trio now, Elder Golden leaves for the field in 2 weeks as he has already been trained) and I can teach a lesson pretty much 90% in
Tagalog.

MTC routine is pretty much eat, study, eat, study, eat, study,
sleep. On P days we can go to the supermarket which is pretty much the exact same
as woolies but slightly smaller and with some different brands. So last Friday
after I sent emails we went out and bought junk food and stuff. They sell over
here 1.5L Gatorade for like $3.50 which is pretty decent as most American
things here are expensive. Like a block of Cadbury chocolate is like 1.5x to 2x
the price than it is back home.

In the MTC, we focus on teaching with the Spirit. With learning a
language, you can testify as deeply as you could in English so you need the
Spirit to fill in the gaps of your testimony. A lot of the time we teach with
our minds as we focus on speaking Tagalog but we’re trying to focus on teaching
with our hears as the Spirit is the one who converts, not us.

Tagalog is a really cool language, it has so many Spanish words in
it. They even use Spanish for counting. Right now in the language, I can bear
testimony pretty much of anything from lessons 1-3 in Preach My Gospel. I can
pray somewhat specifically for things and I’ve just started learning the First
Vision!